How to make the most of events on social media

You’ve found an event to attend, booked your ticket and ordered your stand – I guess all that’s left to do is wait for event day. Not quite.

Events can be costly to attend, be it the cost of a ticket, travel, stand and/or promotional materials. Therefore, it’s important to get the most out of your attendance.

One thing you can do to make the most of an event, is through the use of social media. This includes pre-event, during and post-event.

Here is a quick checklist of the things you should be doing around your event:

Connect with attendees before the event – many well run events will have a website that outlines the event structure and gives details of those attending. Here you can ‘pre-network’ by following and including attendees in your social media updates. Some events have famous faces attending; this gives you the opportunity to piggyback off them. For instance, you can include a message on Twitter such as: “Looking forward to this week’s #SMEBiz2015 event with @DeborahMeaden! Make sure you come and pay us a visit on Stand 14.” Your tweet will now appear in searches for ‘Deborah Meaden’ and there is a strong likelihood your message will be retweeted to all of their followers. This increases the reach of your tweet beyond your immediate followers and helps promote your stand.

Talk to the event organiser to help them spread your message – the event organiser wants to promote their event just as much as you want to promote your attendance. Include them in messages and they will be happy to promote you in theirs.

Identify event hashtags – again, all well-run events will now include an event hashtag, helping to bring together all event attendees into one conversation. Use the hashtag in all your messages.

Promote why you are there – using the tools above, promote your products and services and tell people why they should come and see you at the event. Maybe you’re giving away a gift or revealing something new. This is a perfect opportunity to drum up interest and get people flocking to your stand on event day.

Continue to promote and share pictures at the event – you should continue to promote on social, even when you’re at the event. This is when the event is at its apex, go figure! With people constantly connected through mobile devices and the like, it’s a great way to network and also help support your social media with colourful content.

Connect with leads you’ve met at the event on LinkedIn – if you only do one thing on this list, this is it. Your personal profile on LinkedIn is a powerful tool, allowing you to connect with business professionals and potential customers interested in your product. Therefore, this is where you should follow up on leads made at the event. If your LinkedIn is setup correctly, you will have a company page linked to your personal profile page. Your company page should be regularly updated with the latest articles, news and products from your business. By sharing these updates on your personal profile, the leads you made at the event will see them and in time, you will turn those leads into customers.

If you need help making the most out of an event – please get in touch.